Chapter 38

THE CHASE.

"With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove past, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled."

"Clap on more sail, pursue, give fire-- She is my prize, or ocean whelms them all."

"So many slain--so many drowned! I like not of that fight to tell. Come, let the cheerful grog go round! Messmates, I've done. A spell, ho, spell!"

"It was all hands again, gentlemen. The hurricane had settled down into a moderate gale from northeast, though it was some time before the awfully confused sea got to roll regularly. Then we judged ourselves--for reckoning and observation had been out of the question--to be a long way south of Jamaica, and even to the southward of the great Pedro Bank. We did not wait this time for the pirate to lead us in getting ready for a race, but we got up a bran-new suit of top-sails and courses out of the sail-room, and, so soon as the men could go aloft with safety, they were ordered not to unbend the few tattered rags still clinging to the yards, but to cut away at once. Up went the top-sails and courses, and they were soon brought to the yards and set close-reefed, with a storm-jib to steady the ship forward. Presently we gave her the whole fore-sail and main-sail, and I think that even then, for some hours, but one half the corvette's upper works could have been visible as she plunged through the angry heaving seas.

"It left us dry enough, however, to pay some heed to the brigantine ahead of us. She was about four miles off, a little on our weather bow, and as she rode up--splendid sea-boat that she was--like a gull on the back of a mighty roller, we could see that her bulwarks--mere boards and canvas, probably--had been washed away, the house between her masts gone too, and, no doubt, her long gun, or whatever else had been lying hid under it. And now she was once more the schooner 'Centipede,' long and sharp, and without any rail to speak of, so that we could see her deck from the stem to her taffrail at every lurch she made. The only difference in her appearance was a short fore-mast with cross-trees, and a top-mast for square sails. Almost as soon as our top-sail sheets were hauled home, her own yards went up and the sail was spread, while with the bonnet off her fore-sail, the whole jib and a close-reefed main-sail, she went flying to the southward with the gale a point abaft the beam.

"Thus we went on, the sea getting more regular every hour, so that we could send up the top-gallant masts, get the yards across, shake a reef or two out, and put the 'Scourge' in order. The schooner needed no encouragement from us, but cracked on more sail until her long main-mast reeled and bent over, as she came up on the breaking ridge of a wave, like a whip-stalk. By noon the clouds had gone, and left us a clear sky, with the gale going down into a full top-gallant breeze, sending the corvette along good eleven knots. We got an observation for latitude, and five hours later we determined the longitude and our position to be a few leagues to leeward of the Sarrana Keys, with that bird of a schooner before us heading for the Musquito coast.

"If _we_ had caught a cataract of water as it rolled over our bows in the morning, the schooner was taking _her_ bath in the afternoon, for occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And then on her narrow deck we could see a few fellows lashed about the fore-mast, and a couple more abaft steering her like a thread through a needle.

"We began to gain upon her now, and whenever she kept a little away before the wind the gap between us closed more rapidly; for the ship could evidently outcarry the schooner, and, had the breeze freshened and the sea kept up, we could have run her under if her masts didn't go out of her, as we hoped and expected every minute they would. Gradually, however, she watched her chance and hauled up till she brought the wind barely abeam, and steered true for the Musketeers--a bad cluster of low keys nearly surrounded by as terrible ledges and reefs as any to be found in the Caribbean Sea.

"Her captain was evidently bent upon playing a desperate game, but, if he thought he would not find another ready to lay down the same stake, he was greatly mistaken! It was about sunset when we made the keys, and there we went--the schooner leading us about a mile--at a rate which would have made both vessels leap clear over the first ledge they struck, and perhaps have thrown summersaults of us into the bargain. I asked the captain, who had never left my side on the poop, if we should keep on.

"'Yes, sir,' he replied, 'so long as we have a gun and a plank to float it!'

"And, by Saint Paul! we kept on. And there was not a soul on board the 'Scourge,' from the drummer-boy up, who did not agree with the captain. How those villains on board the pirate relished this decision we could only surmise; but, at all risks, he held his course with a nerve that might have made the devil himself shudder.

"By this time the sun was well down, and a brilliant moon was riding high in the heavens; but, as bright as it was, the fellow who commanded that schooner required an eye as keen as an albatross and a hand as steady as an iron bar to guide his craft in the direction he was going--too late for either of us to think of hauling off.

"He must, too, have had a thorough knowledge of the reefs and keys, and trusted, perhaps, if he got clear himself, that the corvette, drawing eighteen feet water and ignorant of the channel, might touch something which would throw the game in his hands. Our men had the ropes stretched along the decks and the battery clear on both sides, so as to be ready to wear, or tack, or fire, as our pilot ahead might require.

"The reefs were to leeward of the string of low keys, which made the water comparatively smooth, though the wind still swept strongly over us and sang through the rigging; and it was here the 'Centipede' entered, going like wild pigeons the pair of us. The outer reef had a fair, deep passage, and so had the next; but the inner one presented but one narrow gateway, scarcely wide enough for a ship to scrape through, with the whole reef one uninterrupted fringe of black pointed rocks and roaring white breakers, which toppled over, and boiled and eddied like a thousand whirlpools into the smoother water inshore.

"As the 'Centipede's' stern gave a sharp pitching jerk when she entered this boiling gorge, we saw, in the moonlight, her head-yards laid square, the fore and aft sails flowing in the sheets as she fell off with wide wings and the wind on her quarter, and flew down inside the reef.

"Five minutes after we too entered this maelstrom chasm, and, though the helm was hove hard up, and the after-sails shivered, yet, before the 'Scourge's' bows, going at the rate she was, could turn the sharp angle of that water-gate, her port bilge grated against a coral ledge, and grooved and broomed the planks and copper away like so much sea-weed! But yet that slight graze never stopped us a hair's weight, and, with additional sail, we rushed after our pilot, mile after mile, through reef, ledge, breakers, inlets, and keys, now braced sharp up, and again going free, until at last the fellow, having run us a dance of full ten miles, once more emerged into the open water, close jammed on the wind, steering nearly due east.

"There, Hardy!" exclaimed the commodore, "I am tired of talking; suppose you take up the thread of the yarn. Domino, another bottle of tinta!"